The first NACDS Marketplace Conference, held so many years ago in Minneapolis, attracted a handful of the curious and the committed, the workers and the wonderers, the doubters and the dutiful, all of whom traipsed to the northern tier of the United States to discern whether anything new was about to alter their business lives and ­perspectives.

Chain drug store operators and other mass market retailers have much to contemplate as they look to the future. Numerous signs of potential promise and peril appear on the road ahead, challenging executives to discern which of them point to developments that will turn out to have a major impact on their business.